The SOPA debate, one year later

 

 

Last October SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, was introduced in the US House of Representatives. (A companion bill, PIPA, was in the Senate.) SOPA occasioned a lot of debate and ultimately led to some unusual activity, such as Wikipedia going dark for a day in protest. Most importantly, SOPA represented an unusual defeat of the legislative agenda of the entertainment industry.

While the battle over online piracy continues, SOPA led to an unusual alliance of stakeholders that proved formidable. Pam Samuelson of Berkeley has a nice short summary of the SOPA debate entitled Can Laws Stop Online Piracy? that just went up on SSRN here.